understanding patterns; connecting dots

This post is part of a series where I'm recording the appreciative thoughts and emotions associated with various spaces in our house. For context, read my post  Thinking about houses . There are two spaces in our house which are mostly mine. A right turn at the front door leads up a straight wooden staircase which leads away from the hospitality and common areas to a private second floor. I love my office; the light comes from the west so in the mornings the tones are softer and being furthest away from the road, it is also the quietest room. The desk is the dining table we bought when we rented an apartment in CityPoint (Melbourne CBD), so it has always been associated in my mind with working away from home. It was also the table around which we gathered regularly as a family so has the memory of shared family meals on its surface. I love its deep cherry colour and slightly rugged feel. When we found it at Freedom Furniture in 2013, I instantly knew I had found what...

18 months ago I bought a house without Maria seeing it. Here is part of the story of why I did so, why I have never regretted it and what happened next. For more than 20 years of our adult lives we lived in a cul-de-sac in Brunswick. We bought the house we could afford, a brick veneer with ugly yellow bottle glass doors, gaudy chandeliers and many other southern European features. They were fabulous years and we loved living there. But we didn't love the house. We chose it for function not form. Over the years we did our best, with our limited budget, to make it our own. We could afford to do very little in the early days but we chipped away ... we removed the rusted old Hills hoist, with the help of a couple of mates I laid a slab and put up a garden shed. I made a (very shoddy) chook run and shed (it was Brunswick after all). We painted inside. We were lucky that the house was very functional; the kitchen had stuff in the right place and we had a massive family room wit...

published a piece over on colduthie.com

published a piece over on colduthie.com